मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… . . 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Captioning a Slice of '2001: A Space Odyssey'



Martin Scorsese, The New York Review of Books, August 15 2013:

"...Or consider the famous Stargate sequence from Stanley Kubrick’s monumental 2001: A Space Odyssey. Narrative, abstraction, speed, movement, stillness, life, death—they’re all up there. Again we find ourselves back at that mystical urge—to explore, to create movement, to go faster and faster, and maybe find some kind of peace at the heart of it, a state of pure being..."


It's now a cliche to say that Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" is one of the greatest films of 20th century.

Its mood, music, pacing all are so captivating...when I watch it, I become sort of numb with its tragic beauty...

In October 2013, I saw a caption contest for the following frame from the movie. 

On this blog, in the past, I have tried to caption a few of the cartoons from The New Yorker cartoon caption contest. This time, I did not try. I just picked what I thought was the best 'entry'.


courtesy: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / Warner Bros.

" Hey! You morons in the audience, pay attention! Kubrick's going to show you how to build a workable space shuttle, permanent orbiting space station, earth to moon transit system and a deep space exploration vehicle, in minute detail. In 50 yrs you still won't have any of this. What a waste." ( by Mr. Tom Garney, an FB user)

'In 50 yrs you still won't have any of this'...this theme has appeared on this blog a few times...for instance  here   ('Mars One: An Indian Astronaut, Not Chinese, Delivers a Baby on Her Way to Mars') on May 11 2013 and here ('Do I Feel Cheated 43 Years Later in August 2012') on October 29 2012.

 

A scene from '2001: A Space Odyssey'

courtesy: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / Warner Bros.